Asian Games down to elite eights with Olympic places available

All four top seeds at the Asian Games – Jyothi Surekha Vennam and Korean trio Lee Woo Seok, Lim Sihyeon and Joo Jaehoon – survived Monday’s early eliminations in Hangzhou, but there were plenty of surprise knock-out, particularly in the recurve men’s event.

Both the third and second seeds were beaten in the third round.

Ageless Korean Oh Jin Hyek, a winner at this event in 2014, fell to Kazakhstan’s Ilfat Abdullin in a tiebreak, while Olympic medallist Tang Chih-Chun was upset by 15th qualifier Otgonbold Baatarkhuyag, who currently sits 250 places lower in the world ranking.

“I am very happy,” he said after the match. “What happened today is great, but I can not say what I will plan for tomorrow, because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I will try my best.”

Today’s elimination matches ran consecutively on the same field used for qualifying. Starting tomorrow, the competition moves to the arena, where matches will take place one by one, with each archer in the spotlight.

Baatarkhuyag will enter as one of the eight recurve men fighting for a spot in Saturday’s individual final, and one of six shooting for two quota places to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Korea and Indonesia have both already qualified at least one men’s place for the next Olympics, so are not eligible to add another at this event.

Archers representing five countries – India (which has two athletes in the elite eight), China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia – can win a recurve men’s quota by making the final during eliminations tomorrow.

In the recurve women’s event, just four nations remain in the race for the Olympic spots: Korea (two athletes), Chinese Taipei, China (two athletes) and Indonesia.

Japan also has two archers in the event – including Noda Satsuki, who won the ticket to Paris along with her individual bronze medal at the 2023 Hyundai World Archery Championships in Berlin earlier this summer.

Although she seeded only fourth, 17-year-old Aditi Swami posted the highest scores during compound eliminations.

The reigning senior and under-18 World Archery Champion has proven, time and time again, that she’s built for matchplay, shooting matches of 149 and 148 points this morning as she cruised into the last eight.

Competition continues at the Asian Games with individual eliminations on Tuesday in Hangzhou.